


It is the Start of Something New

by KittenKong



Category: The Book of Mormon - Ambiguous Fandom, The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: AU (possibly), Based on 'when it comes to an end' by Distressedegg so read that, Can be read alone though, F/M, Familial Love, Finding Love, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, It happens before this fic, M/M, OC has a big role but trust me okay, past major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenKong/pseuds/KittenKong
Summary: “Connor, you need to promise me, when I’m gone- no, shh – when I’m gone, you need to love again, okay?”So he tries, and he fails, and then he meets a little girl named Hazel.





	It is the Start of Something New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Distressedegg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distressedegg/gifts).



> Oh gosh, talk about inspiration. If you haven't read 'when it comes to an end' by Distressedegg, I really recommend it (you don't really need to read it to understand this, but it helps). It got some of my creative jucies flowing, so then I just had to write this and... well, here we are.

_“Connor, you need to promise me, when I’m gone- no, shh – when I’m gone, you need to love again, okay?”_

_“But Kevin-“_

_“No. No, I need you to love again. I want you to be happy. Promise me.”_

_“I-I can’t-“_

_“Promise me, Connor,”_

_“I… I promise.”_

* * *

 

 

Connor never remarried. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He tried, oh god, did he try. He went on dates and got into relationships and he would convince himself that he was happy… and then he’d really look at his partner, and he’d realise that he hadn’t picked them for them, but rather for their hair, or their eyes, or their smile, because at the right angle they’d look just like-

Well. He couldn’t hurt himself – let alone his partners – like that. So at some point, he just gave up dating. He gave up looking for somebody new. He gave up trying not to feel the crushing guilt of not heeding to Kevin’s wish for him to find somebody to love. He’d visit Kevin’s grave, place new flowers, and beg for forgiveness, because he’d _tried damn it he’d tried so hard._

But Connor hit thirty-four and he hadn’t been in another relationship for more than a couple months. They’d all broken apart at some point, and he was honestly too tired to think about starting any more. He figured that if he couldn’t be happy, that he’d make sure others were, because then the world could smile a little more even if he couldn’t.

So Connor worked. He worked and he volunteered and he made sure that the world would be better when he left it, and that somebody would smile because of something he had done. It was just like Uganda, and it was like Kevin, but this time it was only hurting him, and it was benefiting everybody else, so it was okay. He was allowed to be sad.

And then he met Hazel.

Hazel was six years old when Connor met her, all dull skin and greasy hair. She lived at an orphanage not far from where Connor lived, where he volunteered sometimes, when he had time in-between everything else. It wasn’t a poor place, but it certainly wasn’t wealthy, and he went to sometimes teach some of the older children some basic tap – because joy was finite, in this world, and dancing was as physically rewarding as it was fun – and she’d watch from the stairs, clutching a blanket to her chest, something that looked a little too ratty to have been provided by the orphanage.

After the third time she’d sat and watched, he’d approached her, asking if she wanted to join. She nodded slowly, wide brown eyes twinkling, and he’d held her hand as he led her to the group of other children.

Hazel was quiet. Even when she was comfortable – many months after he had first spoken to her – she spoke in little more than single words, and when she laughed, it was with more her eyes than her lips. She tied the blanket around her neck when she danced – the last gift from her father, the orphanage had explained, before he passed away two years prior – and it flapped like a cape whenever she moved.

Connor thought it was adorable, and he found himself looking forward to his time with her.

She was a spitfire, willing to fight when something didn’t go her way, or when somebody wronged her. He’d had to stop her getting into a fight with one of the older boys when they’d accidently tripped her during their weekly lessons.

Sometimes she came to lessons with tears on her cheeks and snotty sleeves, but she’d give him the biggest smile and hug him, joyfully taking part in the class, and kissing him wetly on the cheek in goodbye.

When she was eight years old, Hazel was still had the orphanage. Connor didn’t really get it, because Hazel was a cute kid, and she was young, so for all intents and purposes, she should have been the perfect choice, but she was overlooked as her peers were adopted one by one.

Connor took the matter into his own hands.

When Hazel was nine, she became Hazel McKinley. She had a room in his apartment, and a photo on the fridge, and friends at school and she was happy.

Connor was happy too.

Hazel wasn’t like Kevin, not really, but they both adored Disney, she loved his favourite cereal, and she crinkled her forehead in the same way when she’d get confused or frustrated, but it didn’t hurt when she did it. It was nice and it was good, and it was… not better, but it wasn’t _bad_ and it _certainly_ wasn’t worse.

She asks about the picture on the hall table not long after her 10th birthday, about the man with the brown hair and the white smile, and Connor explained that he had been his husband, but that he was gone now. Hazel had been quiet the rest of the afternoon, but had crawled into his bed that night and hugged him tightly. The next morning, she’d asked if she could meet him, and they’d driven up to the graveyard, where Connor had cried at the sight of his daughter placing flowers on the grave of a man she’d never met, and Hazel had cried because her papa – by blood or not – was a good man, and good men always seemed to lose too many things. But papa wouldn’t lose her, she thought; she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Hazel grew into a beautiful young woman. Connor trusted her to do the right thing, and she did, and she expected the same from him. He cheerfully met her first boyfriend, and sent them off with a smile rather than the threat the poor boy had perhaps expected, and when they broke up two years later, he slipped into her room with a tub of cookies and cream ice-cream and two spoons, and let her cry. She wasn’t the top of her class, but she worked hard, and came out of high school happy, proud of her achievements, and well versed on the violin. She never took lessons for dancing, preferring to keep that between her father and herself and they either their spent nights curled up on the couch, The Little Mermaid on screen, or blasting music from the speakers and twirling around their apartment.

She graduated collage with a teaching degree, and as she collected it, Connor cried so hard and smiled a smile so wide he thought that he might just pass out.

When Connor was fifty-four, he cried as he gave her away at her wedding, and he couldn’t help but think that she was, perhaps, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, dressed in white, with roses spilling from her fingertips, and a bright smile as she danced with her new husband with so much love in her eyes and a spring in her step.

He spent Christmas two years later cooing over his grandson, at the one after that over his newborn granddaughter, as his daughter waved a batter-covered spatula at him in pretend anger, and her husband hurried to tell her to rest _because she had had a baby last week, for goodness sake._

Hazel still visited Kevin with him sometimes, and her heart would ache at the grief that still lingered in her father’s eyes as his slightly withered fingertips brushed the tombstone with a sadness that she could only pray she’d never completely understand.

He went to his grandsons dance recitals, and his granddaughter’s netball games, and he sat with them in the hospital when they’d both broken their arms, telling them corny jokes and hugging them tight around the shoulders, and he cheered at their high-school graduation and subsequent collage ones.

Connor passed away at ninety-two to the tears of family at his bedside, with smile on his face, unburdened, glad to join his husband, but sad to leave life.

Happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading. It feels really good to be doing this again. If you haven't, check out Distressedegg's story 'when it comes to an end'. (because after all, when it comes to an end, it is the start of something new.)  
> I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> \- KK


End file.
